The coronavirus pandemic has pushed the domestic passenger traffic across the country including at Birsa Munda International Airport to a low, but, now with the drop in daily corona caseload, the aviation sector is once again on flying mode. In the month of May, due to a fall in passengers count, most airlines cancelled their flights services, but now airlines are resuming flight services to other cities. At Birsa Munda International Airport in the past two days, there has been an increase in flight services at the same time footfall of passengers too have gone up.
According to sources at Birsa Munda International Airport, in the past few days every day around fourteen flights are arriving and equal numbers of flights are making departure from Ranchi airport. Few weeks back, the number of flights arriving and making departure was seven to eight flights every day. Similarly, the daily footfall of passengers a few weeks back was around 1800 at Birsa Munda, which presently has gone up to 3500 passengers.
Birsa Munda International Airport director Vinod Sharma said, “If Covid situation improves then we are very much optimistic that the number of flight operations will touch 20 from one side in the next 15 days. Also the passengers’ footfall too will go up.”
The increase in flight services has occurred day-by-day. On June 14, 12 flights took off from Ranchi and 749 passengers arrived while 1215 passengers departed. At the same time, 14 aircraft operated on June 13. In this, 1063 passengers reached from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Patna, Bangalore, Hyderabad while 1698 passengers left from Ranchi. On June 12, 14 flights took off. In this 1388 passengers reached Ranchi from across the country while 1852 passengers took off from Ranchi airport. On June 11, the number of flights reaching Ranchi and taking off was 11. There were 957 reaching Ranchi while 1287 passengers departed from Ranchi airport. Earlier on June 10, seven aircraft operated and 465 passengers arrived and 876 passengers took off for other cities outside Ranchi.
The Airport director said that the Airport Authority of India is maintaining all Covid 19 protocols. The passengers arriving Ranchi from across the country have to undergo RT PCR test, while the passengers leaving Ranchi are scanned thermally. Use of masks, sanitizers and social distancing has been made mandatory. Similarly, in flight the middle passengers are provided PPE kit by airlines so as to check the spread of infections.
The total number of flight operations from Birsa Munda International Airport is 26 from one side. The Ranchi airport is 20th busiest airport in the country and around six airline services operate from here. Some of the airline services having its operation are AirAsia India, Air India, GoFirst, Indigo, Spicejet, Vistara among others.
